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Report: If Dreamliner fails, Boeing becomes GM of the skies

“If the Dreamliner fails, Boeing could become the General Motors of the skies, with enormous repercussions for the U.S. economy and the U.S. manufacturing base,” writes Jeffrey Rothfeder in the May issue of Condé Nast Portfolio.

In advance of the upcoming 787 first flight, Rothfeder gives a clearly written overview of the delayed 787 Dreamliner program, and Boeing’s lessons learned.

Boeing CEO Jim McNerney says that the company has learned that “manufacturing programs cannot operate as islands.”

Article excerpts:

“We may have gone a little too far, too fast” with the technology and materials and in outsourcing production, Boeing chief executive James McNerney told Condé Nast Portfolio. “The program was more than we could handle.”

. . .Boeing’s slide can be traced to the company’s ill-fated $13 billion purchase of McDonnell Douglas Corp. Under chairman John McDonnell and chief executive Harry Stonecipher, McDonnell Douglas starved its design and engineering operations and became little more than a sales organization, barely surviving on offshoots of its aging DC-9 and DC-10 models. The 1997 acquisition infected Boeing’s forward-thinking culture, emphasizing cost-cutting at the expense of innovation.

. . .No large manufacturer had ever before so audaciously turned over control of the entire process–from concept to shipment–to outside firms. In a critical oversight, no provision was made for monitoring the suppliers. Mike Denton, vice president of engineering for Boeing’s commercial-airplanes division, recalls that the vision for the Dreamliner was “not to encumber the partners with the Boeing way of doing everything. So we erred on the side of giving them more free rein than in retrospect we should have.”

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.